


breakable girls and boys

by forcynics



Series: vampire diaries ficathon fills [1]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: 1964, Future Fic, Multi, References to assault and killing, Vampire transformations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-06
Updated: 2011-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-24 01:58:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6137365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forcynics/pseuds/forcynics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whatever they may or may not be to each other, they cannot deny how inescapably close their lives are intertwined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	breakable girls and boys

 

 

 

The first time that he sees her, in 1864, as she’s stepping out of a carriage and smiling the wicked little smile that will he doesn’t yet know will be his downfall, he thinks she must be an angel, or at least that this is what angels must look like. He’s too enraptured to realize that there’s a difference.

He’s surprised the first time that she kisses him, on her tip-toes, in the hallway at night, because she’s so sure of it, biting down on his lip gently, even though proper, young ladies don’t kiss boys in hallways at night. They don’t lead them into bedrooms either, with a beckoning crook of their finger and a sultry giggle that’s unlike anyone else’s laugh. But Katherine Pierce is anything but a proper, young lady. And it’s during the nights, on sheets made startlingly white in the moonlight, that she teaches Stefan Salvatore not to be always such a gentleman.

He knows that he’s falling for her – fallen, long gone – but he knows that Damon is falling for her too. It’s the sort of truth that gets pushed out of mind because there’s no positive way to spin it. There’s no way that this can end well. But he’s fallen into it anyways, and he’s in too deep to stop. He doesn’t want to.

 

 

She’s a vampire. She’s not even human; she’s opening up his eyes to a supernatural world that he never would have believed in. He doesn’t really know why he’s so accepting of this, only that she makes him feel that way. She may be a vampire, but she’s still _Katherine_ , and he’s never said anyone’s name with as much reverence as he does when he’s making love to her.

He’s in love with her. And then it all happens so fast: one moment, she’s the beautiful girl he calls _his_ without realizing that she belongs to no one and everyone, and then she’s gone.

To him it’s less earth-shattering that even vampires can die than it is that even _Katherine_ can die.

 

 

Everything changes with her death – how could he expect it not to? He’s dead too now, and so is Damon. But they’re still here, and Katherine is gone. They’re what she was, what she always wanted them to eventually be. So claims Damon, at least. Katherine was preparing him for this. Stefan doesn’t think that anything could have prepared him for this.

It’s inevitable that they go their own ways after a while. Damon hates him, blames him, and so Stefan doesn’t try and stop his older brother from leaving. They’re brothers forever now, and eventually Damon will realize that there are some ties you can never truly cut. But what’s the point of forever if Katherine doesn’t exist in this forever? After all, _she_ is the tie that Stefan can never cut, even if his memories are coming back and he’s starting to realize how she manipulated them both, played with them, compelled them.

She never loved him, and it only makes the fact that he still loves _her_ hurt even more. He’s surprised how long it takes him to put a word to what he feels, call it heartbreak, maybe because it’s such a simple term, thrown around all the time by people who don’t understand. He thinks that he understands, he understands exactly, because if you break the word down that’s exactly it. Katherine _broke_ him, and even if one day in the future he manages to love again, he’ll never be _whole._

He died, after all. How can you be whole after that? Years pass and pass and soon everyone that Stefan ever knew has died too. He died, but he’s still here. He died, but the part of him that loved Katherine never died. How could it, when it was never a part of him and was always the whole? Even broken, it still lives.

 

 

.

 

 

The first time she sees him, he doesn’t even notice her. She’s busily texting away when she spots him and slowly lifts her head, not bothering to hide her appreciate, little grin, because _hello_.

She digs up all the information on him she can find, falling into instant-crush mode and ploughing ahead with it, because that’s just who she is. Her mom used to say that runs through life, never walking, and certainly never looking both ways before crossing the street. Maybe she should have, though, because when she all but throws herself at him at the kickoff party and he politely rejects her, she’s never felt more stupid. And that’s saying something.

Soon enough, he’s with _Elena_ , and she honestly shouldn’t be surprised, because it’s always Elena, but it still hurts. And then somehow she ends up with his brother, _Damon_ Salvatore, and she flaunts it in front of the happy couple, acts like she’s exactly where she always tries and fails to be: on top of the goddamn world.

 

 

Her and Damon don’t last, though, and no one’s surprised by that fact. She doesn’t know how to call it a break-up when she doesn’t remember actually breaking up with him. They’re over, though, and she feels strangely clear-headed. Except that there’s something that she should be remembering, something _more_ , something missing, but she ignores it, because Damon Salvatore is the last person that she wants to think about anymore.

When the memories – that’s what they are – finally do come rushing back to her, it’s too late for them to serve as warnings because she’s already dead, even though that doesn’t make any sense. Nothing makes sense. She doesn’t understand how she is what she is and she doesn’t understand whythis _Katherine_ would do this to her, but soon enough he’s holding her in his arms and telling her that he’ll take care of her, that he _promises_ he’ll never let anything happen to her. She believes him, and for a moment she lets herself just feel safe in his arms. For a moment, she actually lets herself believe that she’s his, even though she knows she’s being foolish because no one is ever hers, and no one ever wants her.

Who would want someone so broken?

 

 

.

 

 

Katherine has a reason for coming back to Mystic Falls. She has many reasons. She isn’t lying when she tells Stefan that she came back for him. Or maybe she is; truth and lie don’t mean the same thing to her as they do to the rest of the world. If Damon struggles with his humanity, Katherine has long forgotten hers.

When she slips into the hospital, enjoying her Elena charade far too much, and sees the blonde lying in bed, the other girl looks so human, so _weak_ , that it makes her lip curl in disgust. And then she’s waking up, confusion all over her face, and there’s no point in her struggling when Katherine smothers her with the pillow; she’ll never understand how utterly indispensible she is to the vampire.

 

 

“Game on” was her message to the Salvatore brothers, and at least the weak one has it in her to deliver. Everything’s a game to Katherine, because she’s been alive for five hundred years and after so long, it becomes almost – and if she’s being honest, it’s the almost that’s crucial – impossible to care about anything or anyone. Life is cruel, but above all else it is fleeting. Except for her. Her and the Salvatores, who’ll live forever like she always wanted. She loves them, because it’s easier to love than it is to care. She loves them because above all else, she loves being loved.

She loves, but whereas love seems to weaken everyone around her, Katherine is stronger than that.

 

 

So she flits back into their lives, _both_ of their lives, even if she made her choice over a hundred years ago, even if it was never really even a choice. Caroline proves to be a useful little spy at first but Katherine thinks it over and over again: she’s just so damnably _weak_ , even as a vampire. It frustrates her to no end that someone could be so weak, even if she preys on exactly that. She gets a rush out of the other girl’s fear, the visible trepidation that presents itself around _her_ only, because after all, she killed her.

It’s the one thing she can depend on when it comes to the blonde vampire: Caroline is afraid of her. Until one night, when she’s crying and sniffling as usual and Katherine never thinks to suppose that she could be acting, that weak little Caroline could be tricking _her._

She’s infuriated, of course, but that could also be because if there’s one thing Katherine won’t stand it’s things not going as planned, and she was never supposed to feel any respect for someone so weak.

She wonders if turning Caroline was the wrong choice. There’s a tie that’s formed when you make someone into a vampire – when you kill them but they’re still around to try and absorb the weight of such an action. Katherine doesn’t like to think that that the weak, little blonde might have become an actual opponent somewhere along the way, no longer just a pawn.

She’s even more loathe to admit that Caroline might not be so weak after all.

 

 

.

 

 

Time passes, as it always does. Stefan and Elena break up and always get back together and then one time they don’t. It was inevitable; in the end, Elena simply couldn’t do it, couldn’t give up her humanity. So she grew older, tried to live a happy life, and then when she died she left them all behind.

Damon finds somewhere else to run off to, never the same place for too long. It’s history repeating itself: the death of a woman they both loved tearing them apart.

Except that Stefan now knows too well that Katherine was never dead. He shouldn’t have been surprised; Katherine is the axis to his world and there’s no imagining it without her. He wonders how he managed for over a hundred years. He should have known he could never escape her, should have known that Katherine Pierce is the only real forever.

She’s not an angel, though, that much he learned over the years. She’s the farthest thing from it, simply well-practiced in the art of deception. Maybe it used to mean something that she held his heart in her hands, but his is only one among many.

Sometimes he tries to think of her the way he used to, anyways. When she _was_ an angel. But it’s impossible, and what’s the point of it? What a strange illusion, he thinks, to suppose that beauty is goodness.

One error in judgment, one flaw, and it cost him his entire life. And how many others’ were ruined too by Katherine, the girl he’s come to recognize instead as a demon in disguise?

It’s impossible to deny that he was drawn to Elena because of the resemblance, though. Katherine and her may not have been the same person by any means – fire and ice, light and dark, angel and demon – but in appearance they could have been. He’d thought that maybe she could be the one to fix him and make him whole again, if anyone could. But if Katherine was a drug, something he would never stop craving or needing no matter how much he hated himself for it, then Elena was another hit and he, the poor addict, had never stood a chance of holding back.

But there is no Elena anymore.

 

 

She left Caroline behind too, he reminds himself sometimes. The blonde left a while ago as well, staying with Damon sometimes, Stefan got the impression, but never for too long. Unlike Damon, she always comes back to him.

He never noticed her before, because it was always Elena. He’d belonged to Katherine’s doppelganger the second he’d laid eyes on her achingly familiar, hauntingly beautiful face. But now she’s gone. And he doesn’t have a clue where Katherine is, because she always has her own game plan, her own agenda, and he hasn’t even seen her for so many years. At some point along the way, it stopped hurting and became merely uncomfortable.

And Caroline’s here.

 

 

They stay in Stefan’s newest residence, an old property outside New York City. He’s tried the whole seclusion thing but it didn’t work very well. Too much time to think, and that always turned to painful thoughts. He prefers it here, the city throbbing with inhabitants so close by. He doesn’t think he could manage to actually live there, in a city so _alive_ and brimming with energy, so he remains on the outskirts, on the outside looking in.

Somewhere along the way, Caroline became important, though he couldn’t have said when or how. No longer a peripheral character, somehow twisted into this whole mess just as deep as any of them. And yet none of them are at the center of it, because that spot has always been reserved for Katherine and Elena. They avoid that spot, avoid those thoughts, and they hover around the edges and they don’t escape. 

Neither of them were surprised the first time he kissed her; nor by any of the kisses or touches or trysts that followed. He doesn’t let himself wonder if he loves her, because he’s done with love, they both are – they’re finally realizing that although they’re still here, they’re _dead_. But even if they weren’t, this wouldn’t be about that word, because another girl stole it from him long ago and now there’s just a hole where it’s supposed to fit. He’s broken, and even after so many years, he still doesn’t think he can’t be fixed.

 

 

.

 

 

Life is tiring. Caroline looks seventeen, but she feels old.

She’s a thing of beauty still, but it’s also just an illusion, can’t anyone see that?

She finds him, living in New York, and they resume their relationship, whatever they are to each other, as if it hasn’t been three years since she last returned. Sometimes she’s gone longer than that, sometimes it’s shorter. The only thing that’s constant is that she always does come back.

They never talk about feelings, never talk about what they mean to each other. It’s not anything, but it’s not nothing either. Maybe once upon a time she would have wanted more than this, but she can’t bring herself to care. She knows that he’ll always love Elena, that she was the love of his life – or is it Katherine that he belongs to so completely, even now? She can never tell. She doesn’t ask.

It was always Elena, but when she thinks of the competition she used to feel with the brunette it just feels like such a long time ago. Another lifetime ago. In a way, she supposes, it was.

 

 

She can still bring herself to feel hatred when she thinks of Katherine, though. After all, the bitch killed her, and that’s a little harder to get over. Katherine Pierce is the reason that she’s living like _this_ , if it can even be called living. Most days she doubts it.

As much as she’s grown to depend on Stefan, she finds herself building a fortress around her heart when she’s with him, knowing that she can’t allow herself to fall in love with someone whose heart belongs to the woman who stole her life.

She’s done with love, anyways. She’s watched Matt die, watched Tyler die, watched everyone die. Immortality isn’t a blessing, she realized a long time ago. It’s a curse. But she’s not the kind of person to kill herself to escape it all, so she just sucks it up.

Sometimes, she finds Damon, but it’s not the same. There’s hardly anything there after so many years, and besides, she’s not about to be the third woman to trap herself between the Salvatore brothers.Maybe that’s what she has above Katherine and Elena.

But honestly, she just knows that none of them can handle another love triangle.

 

 

She can’t help thinking about Katherine, though, sometimes. The one who started it all. She thinks about how different their lives would have been if she’d never existed. If Stefan and Damon had never turned, Elena had never met either of them and suffered through her heartache, if Caroline herself had never turned. She would have died, _actually_ died, instead of being stuck here like this. Forever has never sounded more daunting.

No matter how many times she tries to imagine it though, she can’t picture her world without Katherine Pierce. It’s not just because it seems too forced, thought up by someone who just wanted a happily ever after. There’s something about the vampire with the dangerous eyes that’s the very definition of larger than life. She’s controlled the courses of so many people’s lives, after all, played with them, changed or ruined them, and Caroline knows that she and Stefan both fall under that category. Whether she likes it or not, Katherine has a sort of claim on her, and always will. She was the one responsible for Caroline’s _un_ life, and that’s lasted much longer than her life ever did.

 

 

.

 

 

Katherine still acts with the spirit of someone who was born yesterday, blazing her way through everything, leaving a trail of destruction behind her everywhere she goes. It’s the only way she knows anymore, and she’s too old to change her ways. Even if she wanted to, it’s been too long for her to simply fix everything. And then there are the things that can never be fixed.

 

 

She isn’t surprised when she finally manages to find him, because she knew that she would. He has more of a hold on her life than anyone else ever has in the past six hundred years – more than she’s ever _allowed_ anyone else.

She _is_ surprised when an impromptu visit to his house leads her to see him and Caroline through the window.She can’t pretend that she’s forgotten the blonde – no other victim of hers has ever shocked or impressed her so thoroughly, after all – but she’s not expecting to see her here, not expecting to see _them._ She doesn’t know how long this has been going on; she hates that she wasn’t aware. 

The anger doesn’t surprise her either. She’s always been possessive and if there was ever anyone to feel possessive over, it’s him.

 _It was always him_.

 

 

It seems fitting in a twisted, tragic way that they have each other, she thinks. The boy she belonged to more than she’s ever belonged to anyone, and the girl who earned her respect when she least expected it. It’s twisted and tragic, because she knows that he still loves _her_ , that what exists between her and Stefan Salvatore is of the sort that can never come to an end. But they have no beginning ahead of them either.

Neither do Stefan and Caroline, she knows.

They’re all trapped in a web of her own weaving, and they’ll be trapped there forever.

She gets some satisfaction from that, at least, knowing that she’s ruined both of their lives so completely. Katherine’s never loved like everyone else loves, it’s true, but as she walks away from the stone house, she’s the only one of the three of them that can actually confront the word in her mind.

She’s used to getting what she wants, and yet she knows that this is beyond that, that she’s done enough damage to ensure that she’ll never have either of them, the two people she loves the most.

But at least she’s damaged them both too, enough to ensure that they’ll never truly have each other either.

And they’ll never have her. 

 

 

 


End file.
